Upgrading an AWS EKS cluster

Use this guide to upgrade an AWS EKS Kubernetes cluster created on the platform.

Before Upgrading

Before upgrading, you need to fulfill the following conditions:

• The version of the EKS cluster Kubernetes to be upgraded is lower than the highest version supported by the platform and the public cloud EKS, and the version that supports upgrading to the highest version is the highest version supported by the platform, see the documentation Version Requirements , and the EKS cluster version and node pool version are the same.

• The upgrade requires that you upgrade the Addon components of the EKS cluster to the version supported by the new version of Kubernetes, refer to the AWS EKS Kubernetes Version Upgrade documentation.

• The upgrade will update the control plane and all node pools with a node rotation policy, which may temporarily disrupt business .

• When the node pool is upgraded, EKS will add new nodes and actively evict all container groups on the existing nodes to the new nodes. Make sure that your container groups are configured properly and can be evicted successfully to avoid blocking the upgrade process. Known reasons that may cause eviction failure are as follows:

  • Dependence on specific node configurations (e.g., independently set node labels instead of node group ones, local storage, host network, specified node deployment, use of node ports, etc.).

  • Unreasonable PDB configuration (e.g., replica number is 1 and minimum available is also 1, minimum available is 1 and allowed offline count is 0).

• There are at least 5 other available IP addresses on the subnet specified when the EKS cluster was created.

• The EKS cluster and all functional components of the platform are not being upgraded, and the cluster status of the EKS cluster and the platform is normal.

Starting the Upgrade

1. In the left navigation bar, click Cluster Management > Cluster.

2. Click the name of the cluster to be upgraded.

3. Click Options > Upgrade Public Cloud Cluster, confirm the prompts in the pop-up box, and wait for the upgrade checks to complete.

4. Click OK to start the upgrade when the check is complete and confirmed. In Upgrade Status, you can view the upgrade progress.

Frequently Asked Questions

When upgrading, under what circumstances will the EKS pool status become “Degraded”, and what will the platform do when the EKS pool status is “Degraded”?

When upgrading an EKS cluster, if some of the available zones do not support the instance type of the node pool, AWS will downgrade the node pool and create instances in the available zones that support the instance type, and the node pool status will change to “Downgraded”, with the error message as shown in the following figure. You can adjust the instance type to avoid this issue. If you cannot adjust the instance type, we recommend contacting AWS customer service for support.

If the platform detects that the node pool status is “degraded”, it will report an error and exit the upgrade process until the node pool status is restored to “active” before continuing the upgrade process.